I'm not a terribly competitive person, and I challenge anyone who disagrees to a sack race. But even with my mild temperament (I only placed third in my age division at the annual tri-county Jerk Festival last month), the animosity that often accompanies sporting competitions and even politics disturbs me.

Now, to a point this makes sense. I understand that our brains are lazy, and it's easier to just cram everything on one side or the other of the us/them fence, rather than consider multiple viewpoints. But the weird thing is how we'd rather spend our time throwing flaming bags of dog poop across that fence than building an awesome bowling alley on our own side.

Case in point: the 2004 presidential election. When I asked any supporters of John Kerry why they were voting for him, this is sort of how it went:

"So why did you decide to vote for him?"

"Bush is terrible! He's gotten us stuck in a useless war, and he's secretly in league withthe Ku Klux Klan!"

"Um, okay. But you must like what Kerry wants to do for the country, right?"

"And he's going to sell our children's organs to zoos for meat!"

On a related note, last weekend, when the BYU football team was being humiliated by Utah State, I saw a fan wearing a shirt that said "Buck FYU." I wish I were making that up.

In conclusion, because I don't know where else this post is going, children are the future.

2
comments:

Jer
said...

As the Jerk Festival Champion, I feel it is my duty to inform you that you are once again, the wrongest person in the history of things that are wrong. Children??? Forget children. They're not the future. You know what the future is? ME! I am against children in all forms. They're trying to take our future from us, starting with their propaganda that they are the future. I say we sell their organs to zoos for meat.